USCIS Proposes Employer Registration Fee for Next Year’s H-1B Visa Lottery

USCIS has proposed a $10 fee for each electronic registration submitted by a sponsoring employer for the upcoming H-1B lottery.  USCIS will accept public comments on the proposed fee until October 4, 2019.

By way of background, earlier this year, DHS published a final rule requiring petitioners seeking to file H-1B petitions in the annual lottery to first electronically register with USCIS during a designated registration period for each worker it seeks to sponsor for the H-1B visa.  USCIS would then run a lottery of all the registrations it receives and notify employers whose registrations were selected to submit a complete H-1B petition with all the applicable government filing fees. USCIS suspended the electronic registration requirement for this year’s H-1B lottery in April because of timing issues.

USCIS has not yet announced whether it will implement the electronic registration system for next year’s lottery, which would take place the first week of April 2020.  The American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) sent a written statement to USCIS last week, expressing its concerns about the lack of any communication from USCIS about when the registration tool would be rolled out and asking USCIS to confirm by mid-September if the registration system will be required for next year’s lottery. 

We will continue to monitor the situation and update you as soon as USCIS releases more information on the electronic registration system for next year’s H-1B visa lottery. 

 For more information regarding the electronic registration program and the proposed fee, please see our previous blog post.

This update is for informational purposes only.  If you would like to discuss this development further, please contact us.